Blog Post – Insights from ISCT 2026: The Golden Age of Cell and Gene Therapy

The International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy (ISCT) Annual Meeting, held in Dublin from May 6-9, brought together scientists, clinicians, regulators, and industry partners, all converging around a shared commitment to advancing cell and gene therapies from bench to bedside.

For our team, the conference was an opportunity to engage with the science first-hand, present our latest work, and see first-hand how the industry is shifting. Read below for our key scientific takeaways, highlights from our poster presentations, and reflections on what the conversations at ISCT mean for the road ahead.

1. The shift from ex vivo to in vivo CAR-Therapies

Perhaps the most significant scientific shift visible at ISCT this year was the momentum building behind in vivo approaches to CAR-T-cell therapy. Traditionally, CAR-T manufacturing has relied on an ex vivo process. This approach works, but it is logistically intensive, expensive, and difficult to scale.

In vivo CAR-Therapy aims to bypass this by delivering the engineering machinery, often via viral vectors or lipid nanoparticles, directly into the patient’s body, where it targets and reprograms the appropriate cells in situ. Early phase clinical data presented at ISCT suggest this approach is progressing beyond concept, with several trials already underway and more in planning across major pharmaceutical companies.

From a laboratory services perspective, this shift has important implications. As in vivo approaches progress through clinical development, the assays required to support these trials will need to evolve accordingly.

2. Expanding beyond oncology: autoimmune disease and beyond

For much of its history, cell and gene therapy has been associated primarily with oncology. ISCT 2026 signaled that this is changing. A dedicated full-day session on non-oncology indications, something uncommon in the context of CAR-T therapy, reflected just how far the field has broadened.

Autoimmune diseases have emerged as a particularly compelling area, with early clinical data showing encouraging results and a rapidly expanding body of research. But the expansion does not stop there. Researchers are exploring CAR-based approaches in neurodegenerative disease, metabolic conditions, and other indications that would have seemed far-fetched even a few years ago.

Running alongside this scientific ambition is an urgent practical question: current therapies reach only a small fraction of those who could benefit. Expanding access through simpler manufacturing, lower cost, and improved logistics is becoming as important a priority as developing the therapies themselves.

3. Regulation is keeping pace, including new rigor around clinical trial standards

A recurring theme across sessions was the evolving regulatory environment. Far from being a brake on progress, regulators are increasingly active partners in shaping the field’s development. The FDA’s recent move to request randomized controlled clinical trial data for CAR-T therapies, which was previously a rare expectation in this space, reflects a maturing relationship between innovators and oversight bodies.

For laboratory partners, this trajectory matters. As trial standards become more rigorous and more standardized, the quality, reproducibility, and documentation of analytical data become even more important.

As cell and gene therapy becomes more mainstream, the demands placed on every part of the ecosystem, including laboratory services, will intensify. Clinical trials will become larger, more complex, and more geographically distributed. Assays will need to keep pace with novel modalities and new indications. The standards applied to analytical data will only become more rigorous.

Karthikeyan’s view for the next 12 months is simple: “We need to ensure cell and gene therapy is available for as many patients as possible, and the indications are getting broader. Let’s keep working together to ensure clinical trials are a success and therapies become marketed products.”

It’s a reminder that the golden age of cell and gene therapy is not the story of a single company or a single technology. It’s the story of an entire field working together.

Interested in how Cerba Research can support your cell and gene therapy clinical program? Get in touch to discuss our genomics, flow cytometry, and clinical laboratory capabilities for CAR-T and other advanced therapy medicinal products.